“When you're playing, you’re being your most creative, thoughtful, interactive self.”
Rats are extremely playful creatures. They love playing chase, and they literally jump for joy when tickled. Central to this playfulness, a new study finds, are cells in a specific region of rats’ brains.. And blocking the activity of those neurons makes the rodents much less playful.
For the new study, Brecht and colleagues got rats used to lab life and being tickled and played with in a game of chase-the-hand. When rats play, they squeal with glee at a frequency of 50 kilohertz, which humans can’t hear. The researchers recorded these ultrasonic giggles as a way of measuring when the rats were having fun.
The team recorded activity from individual cells in rats’ PAGs while they played chase-the-hand or were tickled. Cells located in two columns down the sides of the PAG were active during play, the researchers found. “These cells really go crazy, especially in response to tickling,” Brecht says. Importantly, the same cells were active during both chasing and tickling. “This was where we thought: These are the cells,” Brecht says. “They’re not about moving, or touch. They’re about fun.
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